# Not all lost Jazz albums are created equal … Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/09/11/not-all-lost-jazz-albums-are-created-equal-videos/
- Published: 2019-09-11T00:29:15+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Historians and critics have pored over the recordings of these jazz greats like
Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Stan Getz so exhaustively, it might feel like they’ve
left no stone unturned. And yet, fans are seeing a slew of exciting new discoveries
lately from these and other artists — so-called “lost” albums by some of the biggest
names in jazz.**

“For jazz historians and record producers, the work never finishes,” Nate Chinen
of Jazz Night in America_ _and NPR member station WGBO says. “There’s always another
lead to be pursued, another corner to be explored and when we think we know _everything_
about an artist … There’s often something else that we hadn’t considered.”

In addition to that air of exploration, Chinen says that the jazz industry has “
commercial motivation” to pump out such albums and cites the 2018 album _Both Directions
at Once: The Lost Album_, released via Impulse! Records, which sourced material 
from John Coltrane’s 1963 sessions and reference tapes as a shining example. “It
sold over a quarter of a million copies.”

Later this month, Impulse Records! will release another album, _Blue World_, composed
of Coltrane recordings from 1964 that were originally intended for a film score.

“Coltrane recorded this music for a film in Montreal,” Chinen says. “It’s a cornerstone
of the Québécois film movement. But outside of that movement, it hasn’t been all
that widely seen. So, the film historians and the jazz scholars didn’t connect the
dots here and because the music wasn’t catalogued by the label it fell into this
kind of blindspot.”

A new record of Miles Davis’ lost recordings called _Rubberband_ was just released
via Rhino Records. The album features Davis recordings from 1985 with contemporary
touches. Vocalist Ledisi is featured on the track “Rubberband of Life.” It’s because
of these contemporary aspects that Chinen doesn’t truly consider this a “lost” album.

“We have to sort of raise an eyebrow at that term here because there’s no way Miles
would have envisioned this album because, I mean, Ledisi wasn’t recording music 
in 1985,” he argues. “The sound is clearly something from our time, not his. So 
is it a lost album? I don’t know. But it is indisputably some music that Miles Davis
made at an interesting moment and because he is who he is people will be interested
to hear what this is all about.”

_Getz At The Gate (Live) _was released in May 2019 and encapsulates a performance
from the late saxophonist Stan Getz that Chinen says offers a fresh perspective 
on Getz’s music legacy.

“When you think of Stan Getz, I think many people think of his bossa nova period,”
Chinen says. “This was a live recording made in 1961, a few months before he began
that journey with jazz samba. … He’s leading a fabulous band with Roy Haynes on 
drums. He’s swinging so hard on the bandstand and so, you have this document of 
another side of Getz.”

Chinen counts these unearthed live jazz performances as “an area where the windfall
just keeps coming.”

“We’ve seen so many live recordings that become cherished albums now that weren’t
originally conceived as albums,” Chinen says. “It’s all to the better, I think.”

![John Coltrane performs with drummer Elvin Jones and saxophonist Eric Dolphy in
1961. Impulse! Records is set to release the "lost" Coltrane album <em>Blue World
</em>on Sept. 27.](https://i0.wp.com/mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/
styles/placed_wide/nprshared/201909/758074830.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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